The Secret of Drawing

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[edit] General Information

Arts Documentary hosted by Andrew Graham-Dixon, published by BBC in 2005 - English narration

[edit] Cover

[edit] Information

This four part series, presented by Andrew Graham-Dixon, explores how drawing has shaped our lives. Join him to discover the history of drawing and its relevance to the modern world. Once upon a time the ability to draw was seen as the first and most essential skill of any artist, but in the age of the unmade bed and the pickled shark, drawing is widely perceived as an old fashioned activity. Many modern art schools don't even teach it, preferring to arm their students with digital or video cameras. In this four part documentary series Andrew Graham-Dixon, challenges the tedious modern predacious that it is trendy not to draw and that those that do draw are sad reactionaries, stuck in a dead past, for he thinks the exact opposite is true, drawing is the single most fruitful and vital artistic skill at work in the world today. Over four films which cover nature, the mind, storytelling and design, Andrew Graham-Dixon reveals the history of art and the lives and works of great artists with a startling freshness. He shows us how drawing continues to be indispensable to the making of the modern world and how drawing, innate in all of us, can help us see the world and ourselves anew. Written & Presented by Andrew Graham-Dixon; Series Producer & Director: Ian MacMillan ; An Oxford Film and Television Production for BBC

[edit] The Line of Enquiry (Drawing in knowledge)

Andrew looks at artists who have chosen the natural world as their subject matter and explores how drawing has helped man to understand his place in the universe. The programme covers the Rennaissance, the Eastern way, Turner, Constable and contemporary artists Anthony Gormley and Richard Long. The first episode shows the role that drawing plays in the field of science and research. It begins with an example that shows the role of drawing in the work of a surgeon. In fact, a few lines on paper allow a group of surgeons to exchange information much faster and more accurately than words. The episode then shows Leonardo DaVinci's anatomical drawings, which played as much of a role in the development of anatomy as any medical book. Then the drawings of horses, which were made so carefully that they led to the idea of evolutionary development several centuries before Darwin. Andrew Graham-Dixon takes a look at the many ways in which drawing has connected us with the natural world and also how it has helped advance scientific enquiry, from the Italian Renaissance right through to today. In this first edition, he meets a surgeon whose study of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings of the heart has led him to develop a radical new form of cardiac operation, uncovers a remarkable 200 year-old series of drawings of the moon, and encounters some of the actual preserved birds drawn by the great American ornithologist John James Audubon.

[edit] Storylines (Drawing in the story)

Drawing has always been an essential tool for the telling of stories. Andrew looks at the satire of Gillray, Goya and Hogarth and its influence on photojournalism, American comics, Japanese Manga and Hollywood storyboards today. The episode touches upon a function of drawing such as the transfer of a storyline. Starting with drawings by artists, which depicted not just one object or even one moment in time, but an entire plot, and ending with comics and storyboards in Hollywood production. One of the themes is the unique capabilities of drawing in shifting the content of the picture. An example is a Holocaust-themed comic. At first glance, this topic is generally impossible to imagine in this genre. But the author replaces the figures of Nazis with cats, and the figures of prisoners with mice. The content takes on a new, unusual form, preserving the drama of Schindler's List and the comic style of Tom and Jerry. Andrew Graham-Dixon examines the variety of ways in which drawing has been used throughout the centuries to tell narrative stories, many of them dark or satirical, from animation to Japanese manga books. Political cartoonist Martin Rowson explains how his savage commentaries on contemporary politicians are influenced by 19th century masters Hogarth and Gillray, and in a rare interview the American comic strip artist Daniel Clowes talks about what inspired his celebrated graphic novel Ghost World.

[edit] All in the Mind (Drawing in our minds)

Andrew investigates drawing as a primal human instinct and a learned discipline, looking at the earliest cave drawings and the work of David Hockney and Picasso. The programme uses the latest developments in cognitive science to examine why we draw the way we do. The episode deals with the question: "Why do we draw this way (the way we draw)?" The comments of drawing teachers, the opinion of physiological scientists who scan the brain and eye movements while drawing. For a long time it was believed that the history of the entire civilization does not exceed 6 thousand years (according to written sources). The ancient hunters were primitive creatures guided by instincts. But in the depths of the Altamira cave, drawings were found that were more than 15 thousand years old with excellent quality of execution. Then the drawings of a 5-year-old girl are shown, in which a similar manner of depicting animals is also visible. The episode moves from children's drawings to drawings by Picasso. Both have a lot in common. According to Picasso himself, when he was 5 years old, he dreamed of learning to draw like Raphael. But then he had to spend his whole life learning to draw again the way he could at 5 years old. Andrew Graham-Dixon examines the variety of ways in which drawing intimately expresses the creative mind, from the very beginnings of art, the drawings on the ceiling of the Altamira caves in Spain, to the remarkable works made by autistic twins William and Richard Tyler. He also visits one of the rarest masterpieces of the Renaissance, a vast series of pictures uncovered as a result of World War II bombing in Pisa and shows how Picasso influenced a whole generation of artists.

[edit] Drawing by Design (Drawing in the design)

Andrew explores the role drawing has played in technical design and architecture, studying complex structures such as the Guggenheim and Boeing 777. From Leonardo to Libeskind, he shows how drawing has been a crucial tool in the history of scientific and technological discovery. The final episode is about drawing in design - when drawing turns into things. It begins with the story of the man who created the design of the Cirque du Soleil show "Ka". He also created the stage for the Stones, The Wall for Pinks, and many other top rock groups. Then comes the story about painting in the history of architecture, and finally 3D and fashion. Andrew Graham-Dixon presents a series on the history of drawing. He examines how drawing has been used by designers throughout the centuries as a means of expressing their ideas. In Las Vegas he meets Mark Fisher, creator of stage sets for Pink Floyd and U2, as he constructs a magical set for theatre company Cirque de Soleil. He also traces the line of architectural design from Brunelleschi to the 60s British group Archigram, who famously never built anything dreamt up in their wild drawings.

[edit] Screenshots

[edit] Technical Specs

Video Codec: XviD 1.1.0 Beta 2
Video Bitrate: 998 kbps
Video Resolution: 720x404
Video Aspect Ratio: 1.782:1 (16:9)
Frames Per Second: 25.000 fps
Audio Codec: 0x0055 MPEG-1 Layer 3
Audio Bitrate: 160kb/s CBR 48000 Hz
Audio Streams: 2
Audio Languages: english
RunTime Per Part: 58 min
Number Of Parts: 4
Part Size: 487 MB - 493 MB
Source: PDTV
Encoded by: bigar@ex-bigarville.blogspot.com